Does Autism - Asperger involve the left hemisphere?

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Does Autism - Asperger involve the left hemisphere of the brain (more than the right)?

Anyone know?

From what I can gather, both ADHD and NVLD/NLD appear to be more associated with the right hemisphere of the brain than the left hemisphere of the brain.

But how about Autism - Asperger?

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateraliza ... n_function

Autism is when the right side of the brain is more dominant than the left side (either by genetics or irregularity's at birth.) making speech and social cues hard to understand, in addition thought process is more developed than motion controls. Should you seek more information then you should consider looking on Wikipedia though I can understand your skepticism with that site

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If the right side of the brain is more dominant with autism, would that suggest that a higher number of autistics are left-handed than in the general population?

Well, unscientifically, but anecdotally interesting, I just scanned the web and saw multiple sources speculating that about 13% of the world's population are lefties. Looking at the stats forum for WP (http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt127938.html) 33% claim to be lefties.

I am too, and I'm seeing ASD characteristics more frequently in the branch of the family that has the lefthandedness pop up. Again...don't know if there's any science to that, but it's interesting.

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pandorazmtbox - Thanks for doing that fast research. Appreciate it.

The idea that the right hemisphere of the brain controls the left side of the body and the left hemisphere of the brain controls the right side of the body is a physical/neurology fact. It's science.

- pgd

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Words

Medulla
Decussation of pyramids

i seem to be more left brained, but i write with both hands, and i remember first writing from right to left, sometimes reversing the letters and numbers, when i learned to write.

Crude stereotypes of what are "right brained" and "left brained" people aren't the same as science.

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I imagine the only way to know is to have your brain activity scan or something like that ? They made a "dancer test" on the Internet but it's actually pretty easy to make it dance clockwise or anticlockwise no matter what disorder you may have.
By the way, I know I first see it moving clockwise (I thought it was the contrary but my friends corrected me because I have no ability to tell what clockwise is ), but it's really easy to make it turn the other way so I don't think this can be accurate, I mean sometimes I don't even have to concentrate to see it turn anticlockwise or clockwise, it just keeps changing direction. It would be great to use a software to see in which direction the dancer is supposed to go and to compare it with the average results.


So, these are the qualities each side of the brain "has" :

Left Brain
Logical
Sequential
Rational
Analytical
Objective
Looks at parts

Right Brain
Random
Intuitive
Holistic
Synthesizing
Subjective
Looks at wholes

Looking at these, I'd say that the conclusion that most AS are left-brained would be somehow ironical (and I definetely fit into the left-brained category), but I don't really believe in this "it's scientific, it works" statement about the test.

I'm right-handed, left-eyed and right-footed though eye and foot are less obvious. The persons who share some traits with AS people in my family are also right-handed, the only left-handed person is nowhere near an aspie. I don't know whether handeness tend to be genetic or not but remember than a lot of left-handed people were considered abnormal and thus had to become right-handed so perhaps it's not always accurate.

I think the thing more vaguely close to science that we can say about brain hemispheres is "left-brain - verbal ability; right-brain - visual-spatial ability".

I would say that aspergers is definitely a left brain modality, based on my knowledge of neuroscience. More interesting though, is how the brains of left handed people work. Less of the variance in anatomical asymmetry of the cerebral hemispheres can be associated with differences between males and females than with differences related to handedness. Some 90% of the language center in right handed people is located in the left hemisphere. Whereas, some 70% of leftties appear to have language represented in the left hemisphere, 15% in the right hemisphere, and 15% bilaterally.The overall conclusion is that in comparison with right handers, a higher proportion of left-handers show no asymmetry or a reversal of the direction of anatomical asymmetry. The brains of left handers truly are organised differently than those of right handers.

The way aspergers happens doesn't have a lot to do, directly, with left or right-brain functioning.

In a neurotypical, using facial responses to elicit response from other people kicks in at an early stage in personality formation. In an aspie, things don't work out so well.

Theory of mind is built on that basic, reflexive, communication which is why they say we don't have one. We have one, but it's not the same.

The different sets of mental skills that get categorised into "left-brain" and "right-brain" folk wisdom all develop later, built onto the neurotypical or aspie foundation. Understandably enough they tend to develop differently in aspies than in neurotypicals

hmm, this is very interesting. i'm a leftie- now i haven't actually been diagnosed but i believe i have many very strong AS traits and am working towards getting a DX. but still, i'm the only leftie in my whole immediate family, the only one who has displayed any of these traits, and also the only one who has gone into art (apart from my mother, she was right-handed).
i've always heard that left-handed people are more likely to become artists as the side of the brain controlling creativity is the more dominant in those people. i do believe this to be true as in my own case, but also because probably about 80% of artist friends i know are also left-handed.
anyway, i do think there is a link between the occurence of left-handedness and AS. funnily enough, although my family were well aware that i was an extremely odd child, they always said it's like i was 'born to be an artist' because i was obsessed with creative stuff since i was tiny, and my behaviour as i grew up was simply put down to the fact that i was one of those 'quirky artist' types, when in actual fact i believe almost all of it may have been due to what i now think is AS.

I think that there is not a "side of the brain controlling creativity".

Probably the connection is simply that non-conformist people (like artists usually are) are less influenced by the social pressions to use the right hand; or, alternativly, left-handed people will rationalize their difference thinking "is good to be different" and will traspose these thinkings to the other areas of life.

i disagree. that kind of makes it sound like people have the choice to be left-handed because they don't want to conform, but it's not something you can control. i know that when i was learning to write as a child i actually wrote backwards from right to left across the page because my brain could not figure out how to do it any other way. until the teachers figured out i was left-handed, then i was suddenly able to do it right. if i had been forced to learn with my right hand like everyone else then i would probably have never been able to write properly and my academic skills as a result would have been severely stunted. so rather than 'it's good to be different' it would be more like 'i have no choice but to be different'.